Barcelona - First Full day 10/3/14

Hola!!
We had an early wake-up this morning since we had to meet our tour at 8:45 and we had to walk there.  My directions were crappy so our 5 minute walk turned into a 15 minute march!  Thank goodness for Betty's map reading skills!
We found our guide and boarded the first of two lousy buses for the day!  We headed off into the countryside for a visit to a Spanish "Cava" winery called Freixenet.  It's actually all champagne but it can't be called that since only the one made in France can be called that.  Here it's called "cava" or "sparkling wine".  This place has been making this since the 1800 so they are doing something right, I guess.

 It was a pretty interesting tour and they showed us how they now have machines to turn the bottles several times a day to make the yeast settle in the neck of the tilted bottle.  Then they freeze the neck and open the bottle to make the frozen yeast pop out!  Then they recork and it's good to go!  Naturally, there were some samples at the end just before we exited.....yes, you guessed it.....right thrrough the gift shop!  Just like a theme park!

Our next stop was a seaside resort town called Sitges where we had a guide take us through the "old" town and down to the beach.  It was quite beautiful and the weather was perfect in the low 70's with just a hint of a breeze.  We found an outdoor restaurant for lunch and, since we were pretty hungry, ordered like we were at the Tapa's restaurant from the night before.....HA!  See below what I  thought was a small bites sized calamari!!

It was served on a platter!!  For the record, I did not eat it all!  In fact, the plate I left looked pretty close to the above picture!  Also, it was so salty that I can't fit into my shoes!! 

After lunch we boarded the bus (which apparently had some "problems" and was 30 minutes late picking us up) for the return trip into Barcelona.  We arrived back just in time to board another bus for our tour to Montserrat!  This bus also had a few problems and poor Don got stuck in a broken seat that only reclined!  If you straightened it out...it very quickly leaned you back!  Oh, well, it make his nap arrive faster!  We all konked out on this trip!  

Montserrat is a monastery high up in some beautiful sawtooth mountains that were once a seafloor about a zillion years ago.  Some shepherd boys saw a vision of a Black Virgin Mary and ever since they have been building shrines and monasteries on the mountain.  There is a cog wheel train that takes you to the top but our lousy bus got us there too late to catch the train so we raced up the mountain with Mario Andretti bus driver at the wheel!  The road was nauseatingly narrow and I was grateful I was on the "mountain" side of the bus and not the "cliff to oblivion" side!  Poor Betty had that pleasure! We screeched to a halt outside the monastery and began a very nice tour.

I took this photo from the bus racing up the mountain!
By the time we finished all of this and got back to Barcelona it was 8pm and we headed right for a Pizza place next door to the hotel where we had great pizza and lousy wine.  Oh, well, at $7 a bottle what can we expect?
It's been a very long day and I'm fading fast.  Wanted to get this out before I forgot what we did today!!  Tomorrow is the HOHO bus around town.  (Hop On, Hop Off)  Mellow day compared to what we did today.
My last thought is that I hope my feet shrink enough so I don't have to go barefoot!
XOXOXO
M